Well, they’re going to repair her on site in the Murmansk bay, a new dock is under construction at shipyard #35 (ETA 2021) and the preliminary schedule has her back in service by 2022:
https://iz.ru/858009/2019-03-19/avianosetc-admiral-kuznetcov-otremontiruiut-k-2021-godu

I think this is a bit closer, but I messed up with the colors so there is some serious banding going on. Oh well, can’t wait to see some official shots of it from above/below…

If we’re to take the various amateur drawings/interpretations literally (and honestly, we probably shouldn’t do that just yet as they’re essentially wild interpolations based on lackluster visual material), it has the exact same “planform alignment” as for instance the (very similar, but smaller) Dassault Neuron, RQ-170, Phantom Ray, the Chinese “Sharp Sword” (Li-Jian) or why not the good old F-117 for that matter. That is, the trailing edge is somewhat less swept.

All of the drones (not the F-117, but it isn’t a drone) above similarly have their engine in line with the intake , but obviously the engine face is wholly or partially hidden from the front. That’s fairly easy to do when you wanna stay subsonic and don’t have to bother with managing high airflow velocities. The Chinese “Sharp Sword” prototype has a borderline identical rear end for that matter, and nothing suggests it’s anything but a temporary thing during development.

Regarding the engine in general, obviously you cannot “x-ray” some still JPEGs and determine how the engine is set up. The nozzle comes straight from a legacy turbine, but that says absolutely nothing whatsoever about what kind of speed regime it’s eventually meant to operate in etc. We can however look at all the other flying wing drones out there, that are look very similar to one another (except the X-47B, which has a cranked leading edge, and thus according to the experts here cannot possibly be any stealthy) and are subsonic by design (for a plethora of reasons), and reasonably assume that this one is meant to be too.

God, why do I even bother.

Does any of you guys have any comment on the Tu-22M3 crash video posted above?

What kind of comments are you looking for? It is indeed a legit video, and it was a heavily-laden (two Kh-22’s, nearly full fuel) plane that touched down way too hard in near-blind visual conditions. According to Russian media, the plane was from ’86 but had flown rather little, and was inspected and overhauled completely six years ago.

There are speculations that the radar altimeter might have malfunctioned, or the ILS on the ground, but most say somebody likely made a grave misjudgment somewhere, with either the pilots messing up bigtime, ground control not doing their job properly (for example by not forcing them to redirect when conditions were that bad), or both messing up in a fatal synergy. But, the investigation is ongoing so, nothing’s quite determined yet.

RIP to the crewmembers that died, at any rate. The way it just slams into the ground and splits in half looks absolutely horrific.

Forum seems to be working better now, no more manual tags required. Right.

So, basically, this drone is a big thing for sure. Judging by the dimensions that one can surmise from the photos and comparisons on the previous page it has the same (or nearly the same) “footprint” as an Su-57, and being a flying wing UCAV, it’s ever so slightly larger than the X-47B. People over at Paralay found photos of an Su-34 being towed by the same K-700 tractor, and the drone appears to be similar in size, so yeah…

The engine fitted to it is certainly a Saturn/Lyulka Al-31/41 ditto, so it’d provide something around 90-100 kilonewtons dry (and there is no reason to believe it’s afterburning). High subsonic, in other words. Clear analogies can be drawn to the X-47B here too, which from memory has an F-15 style P&W F100.

The rear end so to speak appears hardly finished on the drone, with a big rectangular cut-out, so expect changes in that region if/when this contraption ever enters service.

Difficult to say anything about all the various sensors and antennas scattered across it, as it’s very clearly an early prototype and a lot of those things are bound to be temporary. The radome appears to be of a rather small diameter, quite possibly housing something akin to the Su-57 cheek (and posterial?) arrays, rather than a fighter-sized frontal AESA.

The gear is so similar to T-50/Su-57 that I’m almost willing to bet they’re one and the same. Also gives a good idea of the scale:

The new T-50-3 scheme has the Okhotnik silhouette not only on its fins, but also in its pixel camouflage: And Okhotnik has the same undercarriage as Su-57: So it’s a big ass drone.

And the Tu-22M3M has flown:
https://uacrussia.ru/ru/press-center/news/gluboko-modernizirovannyy-raketonosets-bombardirovshchik-tu-22m3m-vypolnil-pervyy-polet

Funny. I was going through various old documents/presentations from the Russian Academy of Science, and found the MiG-31+Kinzhal being referenced in 2016. So that “surprise” this spring really wasn’t much of one.